New from Cambridge University Press!

Sociolinguistics from the Periphery "presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users."

Book Information

Articulated in its introduction, our central preoccupation in this book isto show, from the perspective of our intellectual paradigm for thescientific characterisation of Language called Performative Linguistics(UWAJEH, 2002), how translation is essentially a linguistic operation. Thisdemonstration is effected through an in-depth study of the key translationnotion of equivalence.

In Chapter One, we argue that, being a language performance, translation isimpossible without language competence, comprising language structureknowledge and language use knowledge. Chapter Two characterises translationas a linguistic communication activity; we demonstrate here thatinformation (NOT meaning) is therefore the primary goal of translation, andthat there are four standard types of equivalence in translation forconveying information - following UWAJEH’s Four-Level Model of Translation.

In the remaining chapters, we examine how linguistic knowledge is exploitedin different ways at the four levels of translation as a language performance.